Raw
by SojournersSecret
Summary: Wilson's always helping everybody. Who is there to help Wilson?


RAW

**Disclaimer: **My thanks for the characters of Wilson, House and Cuddy (with the exception of Dr. Roberta Grey: she is a character I created without profit, solely for the telling of this tale) are with great appreciation and gratitude to their creator, David Shore, of Shorez Productions: and all those associated with the makings of House, Heel & Toe Films, and Bad Hat Harry Productions. This Fic is rated T (PG-13) for dark angst, and takes place during the Season 3 Tritter arc, sometime after "Words and Deeds" and before "One Day, One Room".

Wilson waited uncertainly outside of the Princeton-Plainsboro psychologist's office, wondering if he should go through with the idea that had taken on hypnotic proportions in his mind; wondering, simultaneously, if he was insane to be here at all, and glad that he was at least about to be in the vicinity of professional care. He felt similarly to when he'd ducked into the Dragon's Den and asked Detective Tritter for silver in exchange for House's private matters to be made legally public. He remembered even telling the unshakable Detective he felt "like a mob informant."

It was this way now. He couldn't shake the feeling that he was snooping where he wasn't wanted.

_This isn't the same thing, James_, he tried telling himself for the umpteenth time, even as he knew he wasn't convinced for the umpteenth moment. _You're doing this for his sake; you're just trying to be a good friends._

Even though he had no reason, knowing he was becoming slightly paranoid in taking sideways glances to make sure none of his fellows were around, Wilson felt he was He was glad the office was not on the Diagnostics' floor, which was also his own floor---this meaning he could avoid run-ins with House's team, who might become suspicious and wonder whose door the Oncologist was loitering about by. (No doubt one of them would question, and if he failed to have an answer, it would come up somehow to House, who would no doubt conceive his own version of the truth, which usually meant Wilson was having some fantasy romance with one of the RNs and was simply moving up ranks.)

House would never approve therapy, certainly never joint therapy. His first round of dripping sardonic comments would fill Wilson's ears with accusations of wanting him for a lover---'By therapy, do you mean Couples' Therapy? A little early for that, aren't we supposed to have had sex first before all the good fighting begins?' and then would continue to chastise him for not having spent enough time with the wife (make that wives, plural) in working on saving more than one of three marriages---the last two of which House had always preordained not to last, to begin with.

Yet, House's cynicism was the least of his worries---House was the one who needed the therapy (addicts always denied it) but House was a born rebel and would refuse anyone telling him how to think and how to live. (This, Wilson knew, was not what therapists intended, but that was how House would take it.) He would automatically resent anyone who tried to suggest he was wrong about anything---for House needed scientific proof---and feelings, as they were, simply just weren't enough.

This was a kind of stoicism Wilson wished he'd had when he was a kid and bullies would pick on him and beat him up on the playground and call him "Wilhelmina" because they said he had narrow cheekbones that, as a young boy, made for slightly feminine features. He was glad House never likened him to a girl, because House knew this story and somehow had decided that Wilson had endured enough to avoid being just another bully. (He knew if he told any therapist with a PhD this story: which had, unfortunately, happened more times than he could count---that therapist would say his three failed marriages were a macho attempt to boost a failed ego, but he didn't need to pay 60 an hour for that.)

In the instance that House had let this humiliating confession slide (he had been partly drunk at the time; it had been a long day; he'd received word that two patients had died simultaneously in one afternoon) Wilson was glad House wasn't the kind to deal easy sympathy, or suggest he try hormonal therapy to boost his estrogen level instead of shrink his ego. House had been surprisingly respectful, and as these moments were rarities as far as House was concerned, Wilson told himself it was for moments like these that he was ready to do what had been on his mind for at least four months now. (Perhaps, he knew then, maybe even longer.)

Before he could change his mind, he knocked on the door brusquely three times: one for each wife. This was his signature knock, and only House knew it, but today was going to be different. Today the same rules didn't apply.

"Dr. Wilson?"

Wilson stepped back, momentarily taken by the prompt approach of a woman that towered over him considerably, leaving him feeling almost dwarfed in her presence. Her legs took one foot and a half of their own, standing upon two high-heeled shoes. At approximately six and a half feet, she scaled him by one full foot. Her coffee-and-milk-colored brunette hair was pulled back into a self-respected professional bun, and her small-framed glasses sat on her nose as though they were there since birth.

"Dr. Roberta Grey," she introduced, when he didn't speak. "Lisa Cuddy referred you to me, remember? In fact, maybe I'm not supposed to tell you this," Dr. Grey added, with a heart-stopping smile and lowering her voice to a conspiratorial hush, "but Lisa and I go way back! Did she tell you we were roomies, back in College?"

"No," Wilson managed, somehow allowing himself a breath before he suffocated on his own air. "What---what college?"

"Undergrad, NYU, for starters. Before she knew she wanted to be Dean of Medicine at some posh regal Teaching Hospital like she is now. Oh, but you already knew that...I'm being silly." She shared a half-embarrassed chuckle at her own expense, and, before Wilson could comprehend this newfound knowledge about Lisa, she added, "Did she tell you we shared boyfriends as well? And that his name was, in fact, Dean?"

Wilson barely knew where he was at that moment, much less if Lisa had told him that she and a breathtaking woman of magnetic proportions had shared the same boyfriend perhaps at the same time at NYU before they both decided to become doctors. He barely knew his name was Dr. Wilson.

"What?" he responded dumbly.

"Never mind, never mind. None of that's important now; it's in the past. You must think me a real bore, huh?" She drew a hand out, ushering him inside the room, where he could see numerous potted plants and spider plants hanging precariously from the ceiling. "Come in, come in. Please. Before you think you're putting me out."

"Isn't the therapist not supposed to be concerned about what other people think?" Wilson at last found his wit, and blushed in spite of himself.

Dr. Grey paused mid-step and smiled almost shyly, causing his heart to nearly melt. "Well. Normally, I'd say that's true." She re-arranged the pillows on the sofa he'd be residing on, and absently picked up a pillow a patient hadn't noticed that had landed a humbling spot on the floor. She cocked her head at him, as though she were trying to sort out a puzzle---making Wilson all the more glad that House was not attending this session, because he had first dibs.

"But therapists aren't super-heros, you know, contrary to popular belief---we're not dishing out sessions to the magazine rack so millions can seek help from stock characters with bubbles coming out of their mouths." She laughed at her own comment, and Wilson suddenly wondered if he might need to barrow House's cane, or better yet, a wheelchair: because he was having a hard time feeling his legs.

"So, Dr. Wilson, please. Make yourself comfortable."

Oh I am, he thought. I am.

And did not sit, but remained standing. "Dr. Grey," he spoke up softly, absently rubbing his neck, glad she did not know it was a habit of his when nervous, "Do you think---I mean---is it all right, if I, uh, what I mean to say is---Could I..." Inside his heart raced a million times faster than normal and he worried frantically that he might pass out, and then who would have to be running up to save him but House, because it was always House who saved everybody. Except this time he might die not of panic but of something else. He wouldn't dare call it ilove/i.

"What are you trying to say? If you're having trouble, maybe we could role play?" Dr. Grey suggested coyly, giving him time to collect himself in desperation.

"I'm sorry, but---Can I call you Roberta?" he blurted out at last, despite his better senses. "You, you see---I can't talk about personal thoughts and personal feelings, without being able to call someone by their personal first name. It's---it's just---kind of---a rule. Call it, I guess, a tick, or, or, or, I don't know, a compulsion---I don't think I have Turrets, really, though," he added perhaps too quickly, knowing he was falling all over himself like some lovesick fool.

If only House could see me now, he thought, wincing with embarrassment at such a juvenile display. If House knew he'd acted like such a lovesick puppy, he would never be able to lay it down.

To his amazed relief, however, Dr. Grey was delighted. "Of _course_, you can!" she smiled, brightly, and sat with the dignified preservation of a Goddess. "You are more than welcome. And, if it is OK with you, can I then call you James?"

He felt something then he hadn't felt in months. It was happiness. Pure and simply happiness. How could he have forgotten what this felt like so quick? He almost wept tears of joy.

"Of course you may call me James." He caught himself before he almost let loose completely and said, _You can call me whatever you want,_ because he would not want her to call him Wilhelmina; but then he laughed at himself because she would not do such an undignified thing.

"I must say you have a very nice laugh, James," Dr. Grey (Roberta) commented, and his heart all but soared to new heights.

After the dark days of Tritter, after the dark days of coming close to nearly losing his job altogether because of House's denial and his own failure to have called himself a witness to House's continuous downward spiral that had been ongoing ever since the infarction left him burdened with a chronically pained right leg, Wilson almost did burst into tears, this time of gratitude: it had been so long since someone had paid him a compliment.

"Thank you," he managed weakly, then lowered his eyes to the floor, suddenly feeling sickened with regret. He did not deserve such kindness. iYou are not a traitor. House apologized to you when he was in Rehab. Just because the Rehab was an act for Tritter and for the Judge to keep him out of jail, it does not mean the apology was an act as well./i

**Believe in what you want.**

In that second, it was as though a flash flood of once gated emotions had suddenly become unhinged and he felt that unyielding cloud of judgment that kept him up nights descend upon him once again.

"What is it?" Roberta asked kindly.

"I'm sorry," he allowed, though he knew his mood had shifted, but he could not tell her why. It did not fit the situation; she might think him the one in trouble here. "I haven't been getting much sleep lately."

"Why so?" Roberta asked with gentle conduct as she suddenly set a box of tissues upon the small coffee table in front of him that was, he suddenly noticed, empty if not for the tissue box. He stared at it, suddenly disgusted by his abrupt and unnecessary silence: had she noticed tears in his eyes?

"Oh," he exhaled loudly, "Well, it's---a long story." Why was he acting deliberately indifferent to his own perpetuated cause?

"My ears were made for long stories." She was a class act, leaning further in, letting him steer the boat. "You haven't told me what this is all about yet." She studied him softly. "I read in your file, you have been to a therapist, once before?"

"Last divorce," he shrugged, privately saddened to bring in the past, and frustrated that his wife's shadow had followed him even into this office and in Roberta's presence. "I wanted it, she didn't. She was through with me, she wanted the house in the Hamptons and I didn't. So I let her have the house and all the furniture from our house here and the two cars and the retirement benefits because I can always get a better one. End of story."

"That wasn't a very long." She seemed disappointed, as though he'd made it all up; as though the fallout had been too simple, too complete. He bristled in spite of himself at her demand, wondering what else she wanted. "If that's not what you wanted to talk about," she continued, "Why are you here?"

"I'm here because of my friend." He nearly whispered the words, for he feared if he rose his voice any higher he might begin shouting. And this woman he could not raise his voice to. She was too precious for him to ruin a perfectly good beginning. So why then did he sound so unintentionally defensive? Was that just all in his own sleep-lacked brain? When Roberta's face appeared to remain blank and no words omitted in response, he offered, "I suppose Lisa told you about our mutual friend House?" As an afterthought he added, to lighten the tenseness that had crept its way into the room, "Since we're of the opposite sex he couldn't have been shared between both of us as much more than a friend."

"Duly noted," Roberta nodded with a forgivingly prompt manner. "And, in answer to your question, no, she did not tell me about anybody named House."

"House the doctor. Diagnostics Department. Takes those cases nobody else wants, more less is able to solve. Don't tell me you don't know him. He's a bit of a celebrity here. And that doesn't necessarily mean he's got fans."

Wilson chuckled to himself sadly, though he was saddened more when his companion did not laugh along with him. It was now his turn to stare back at her blankly, somewhat surprised, if not a bit disappointed. "You---are then, by that silence, telling me---you don't know him?"

"No, I can't say that I do," Roberta shrugged, the half-hearted attempt at dark humoere lost on her. "I just started work here last month, thanks to Cuddy and a college reunion, where I let her know through email that I was in between jobs and was looking to relocate, and she told me that there was an opening position here at Princeton-Plainsboro, so there you are with my little back story. She hired me. I assumed I had met everyone in the building that had also been hired by Cuddy, but...I guess I was misinformed." She parted the hair from her eyes, a quirk that Wilson was beginning to adore.

"You're in for a treat, then," Wilson heard himself say, "because if you haven't met him yet, I'm the only one who really knows him, and you don't know what you're in for, and he's why I'm here to begin with." He let out a sharp breath, realizing he hadn't breathed yet during the whole length of that sentence.

"Well, I'd be delighted to meet him, but I'm a bit confused." She shifted one leg and re-crossed the right over the left once more. "You say you're here because of him. You both work in this hospital, so...Please give me the benefit of the doubt here for sounding dense in asking, why isn't he here himself?"

"It's...another long story," Wilson gave in reluctantly. He shifted uneasily, feeling around in his right pants pocket, and retracted a black box with several buttons aligning the front, and laid it upon the coffee table next to the tissue box.

Roberta stared down blankly at the box. "Why did you bring that?" she asked, without removing her position, confusion leaving her transfixed to the tape recorder on the table. "You do know I don't record sessions, right? I would have brought my own tape recorder, if that was the case," she mumbled, as though it were not to him but herself, and he felt all the more regretful for having brought it to begin with.

"Evidence," he stated, straightening himself up slightly on the couch.

"Of?" She continued to stare at the tape recorder, then, at last, at him.

Wilson fought to keep his composure as a scream began to climb its way precariously up his vocal chords, and somehow managed to silence it before he spoke: "An incredibly selfish man who's in more than just a lot of physical pain." Another scream threatened to overtake the first, and it took longer to silence this one than the last. "An incredibly selfish man, who is slowly killing himself but doesn't know it; who craves pain so he can kill it; who is my friend, so that I can istop /iit---"

"Hold on there, friend, back it up just a bit so that we can be on the same page here," Roberta silenced before he knew he might truly fall off the deep end. "I can see that you are very concerned about this friend and you care a great deal about him but first you need to speak very slowly and clearly so that I can understand this story from the beginning."

Wilson pushed his lips together tightly, willing himself to stay strong. He'd done it before, all throughout the detox, the betrayal; all throughout the trial, then the relapse; why shouldn't he be able to hold it together now? How could he even begin to explain House?

"He's in pain. With his leg. Every day," Wilson started, alarmed at the rushing sound of his voice hitting at him in waves. Before she could ask the standard question "Why?" he brushed on, "You don't know what that's like. It's torture. Agony. A kind you can never get away from. His body is his own enemy. Pure agony, every minute of every day. Beyond agony. Beyond words."

He clutched his knees without thinking, needing some point of refuge to cling to before letting himself take the ultimate dive into the mind of Gregory House and loose himself forever. "He's in pain, but he won't ask you or me for help. There's only one thing that he lets help him."

iAnd only one person/i, he thought, wincing with sudden regret. "He's never been the same since it happened. Well---ialmost/i---never the same. He was always a bit of a jerk." Wilson caught himself by surprise as he smiled at bygone memories. "Now he's pushing everyone away. He won't let us near him. He just hates. And hates. And hates. Sometimes, I see a glimpse of what he used to be. But it's only a glimpse, never anything more, nothing that ever lasts. And last year"  
Wilson sucked in the remains of the sentence, letting the entrails curl around his esophagus, almost choking him.

"What happened last year?" Roberta (Dr. Grey) prompted, sitting riveted to her seat as she watched him bring a hand up to his face and pinch his eyes shut as though this would somehow will the vision of House being wheeled on a bloodied gurney away.

"He was shot---twice." He said the words, but his voice did not sound like his own; it sounded like it had been filtered; it sounded as though he were under water. "It was the sick work of a former patient's surviving widow, her husband. He came right into the conference room and shot him once in the neck and grazed him with another bullet to the thigh. His team---they were there, they watched him get shot."

"Where were you?"

"Where was I?"

"Yes, that's what I'm wondering."

He had meant it as a question, not rhetoric, but she did not know that. He was suddenly furious at no one but himself---not the gunman, not House, not for the hospital guards who were supposed to keep firearms out of the building; not for her for not knowing he did not mean to ask---just himself, and himself alone.

"I told you it was his team that watched him; I was---I don't know---somewhere, wherever I always am at 2:35 in the afternoon, getting coffee, grabbing a late lunch, seeing patients, writing prescriptions..."

"What just made you angry, James?"

"Please---please---just call me Wilson." He glanced away sharply towards the window, seeking sanctuary, as he felt his face burning with mortification at having slipped in front of her, and he knew it wasn't dignified but if he could, he would cower under his title.

"What made you angry just now?" She was prodding him for answers. She now used no names at all and he felt profoundly ashamed.

He felt himself fold inward. "I don't know, I'm sorry, I didn't meant to snap at you like that….I'm just...I guess..." He exhaled sharply, and, overcome with frustration, rubbed a hand across his eyes as though to rid himself of hidden sleep. "Like I said, I haven't been sleeping lately. I haven't been myself," he acknowledged suddenly, hoping she would forgive as easily as he would to her. Feeling lost, he nearly pleaded, "Please forgive me, Roberta, I didn't mean to take things out on you."

"Relax. You're forgiven. You are dealing with a lot of stress right now; it's understandable you're 'not', as you say, 'yourself'. Dealing with an addict can be exhausting, especially on a daily basis; especially if you care about that person very much, and I can tell by how you talk about him with such feeling in your voice that the two of you are very close."

His throat caught before he could catch it, and he stared mutely at the floor, lest the floodgates open against his will.

Like the brilliant psychologist she was trained for such situations, she continued without fail. "You need to give yourself a break, James. It seems to me you have had a very trialing year, and having a close friend get shot in the same vicinity as you can take its toll. It's a traumatic event. He could have shot any one of you."

"A lot of people don't understand why I'm friends with the kind of guy...who...goes out of his way to cause trouble. That patient's husband was having an affair, and he told the patient of the man who shot him that he was. That was why he shot House---not because he was some crazy lunatic, but because the affair caused the patient to commit suicide. House is an ass, but he saves people almost every day"

"You don't have to justify why you're friends with who you're friends with to me," Roberta alerted him kindly, allowing him the pride and loyalty to linger despite his fear of judgment. "You are clearly important to him or you would not know so much about him. If a man wants to push people in his life away, the lucky few that get to know him he holds very dear."

The words were like a breath of fresh air, and Wilson felt the tension inside begin to loosen and gradually recede; the words were their own version of a kind of proof for the answer to a question he'd always wanted answered, and an answer he'd somewhere, deep down, always known.

Immediately he felt a sting of guilt hit him in his gut as he remembered the tape recorder, and why he had brought it.

"Our friendship was really tested this year," Wilson murmured, testing the words out on his mouth as he said them aloud for the first time, a thought never far from the back of his mind. Even as he and House played fuzball; even as he and House joked over some ungodly hospital-staff-based gossip; even as he grabbed lunch with House before House could grab his share of Wilson's lunch like he always did, Wilson knew that while some traits of their lives before Tritter, before the real detox and near-overdose and his own betrayal for the greater good (or so he told himself so as to sleep through the night) had come and come to pass, some things would never be the same.

"How so, James?" He felt his shoulders loosen with ease at the sound of his own name spoken, and found himself, against his better wishes, remembering.

"House comes to work, every day, despite the pain," he admonished, with carefully wrought clarity. "He comes to work, every day, and every day a life is saved.Of course, there are always those times in a doctor's life where mistakes happened, you know, he's only human!...and you can't do anything about the past.Yet, I---I never thought..." Wilson could feel himself slipping, no matter how much he tried to gain control of his tongue, that amount of self-control eluded him again.

As Roberta no doubt fought to keep up with his ranting recount, Wilson fought to keep up with his own mind.

"You sympathize with him," Roberta pointed out, and at last Wilson could breath, but it was strained.

"No," he stated sharply, startling even himself, "not 'sympathize', I 'empathize'. He doesn't want my sympathy, and, to tell you the truth, it's a wonder because he sure does things that ask you to feel sorry for him, almost constantly; I am _constantly_ trying to avoid feeling sorry for him."

"So you do, then."

"Do what?" Wilson blinked, momentarily dazed, and bewildered.

"Feel sorry for him. You try to avoid it, but you said 'try', which, in essence, means you do, on occasion. That's nothing to be ashamed of, James. Why not just admit it?"

Roberta's words stung, as though he had been slapped. "If I did, he'd belittle me, he'd tear me down, he'd laugh in my face and say something along the lines of: 'You _sympathize_ with me?" he scoffed at himself, trying to immobilized House's self-absorbed sarcasm. " 'You just want to hold my hand like you want to hold every one of your patients' hands when they die.' He wouldn't want me to hold his hand, to give him balance throughout the day. He has a cane for that."

Wilson shook his head in amazed disgust, though he wasn't sure who it was directed to more: House or him.

"He holds no one's hand. He tells them what they never want to know, because it's for their own good. I'm the one who should be pitied," Wilson heard himself (or someone who sounded very much like him) say, I'm the one who's the wimp, in search of sympathy. You know I called him a coward?"

He laughed bitterly in spite of himself, shaking his head abruptly as though to wish the memory away.

"I called him a coward when he was in Rehab, because he was feeling sorry for himself. And you know what? It irked me. It just outright irked me! And you know what he said to me then? After I told him he was copping out because he was afraid to look at himself, after I had called him a coward?"

Wilson could tell he was treading a very thin line, but he could not stop himself. He suddenly felt an awful high; he felt as though a ton of bricks were being lifted. "You should have seen the look on his face! He said, 'Thanks, I was running short on platitudes; you can leave now'. And he blew a ring of smoke in my face, right under a No Smoking Sign."

"You did say he was a rebel. I get that. What I do not understand, James, is why you feel you have to make him change."

For a fleeting second Wilson thought his heart had altogether stopped. "I'm his friend," he stammered, "Don't I have a say in whether he kills himself or not?"

"Do you think he's suicidal?"

"He overdosed on Christmas Eve," Wilson whispered, his throat aching at the words, the words sounding themselves as if from a dream, "I found him in his own vomit."

Silence, and he feared he had been dreaming, preying again he would wake up from this nightmare.

"What had he taken?"

"Half a bottle of Oxycodone. It was one of my own patient's prescriptions: that will give you an idea of just how far off the deep end he'd gone."

"You took him to the emergency room?" Roberta pressed.

Wilson froze, knowing that his time of confessing the darkest moment of his friendship with Greg House had come. "No," he blurted, relieved to have it, at last, out in the open. "Do you think he would have let me?"

He knew it was a hollow answer, empty of the loyalty he knew House would have come to expect, but he could not explain his actions that night, nor some that had come after. As though this could account for his decision, Wilson proclaimed, "He'd vomited up half of it already. He was alert and breathing; but, believe me, if it wasn't going to be the Oxy it would have been some other means of diverting himself from pain. He wouldn't have me bring him to an ER; he never would have forgiven himself, or me; doctors just don't overdose; he was beyond help."

Time seemed to come to a standstill as Roberta as she absorbed this information.

"You left him lying in a pool of his own vomit?" she echoed, as though trying to piece together the puzzle for herself, as though she had been there from the start instead of him. "You left him there, to his own devices, suicidal to say the least---no matter if he went into a coma and died, no matter if it was to alleviate pain or rid himself of this life---did you even check to see if he was lucid?"

Roberta's anger and challenging demeanor pierced his heart with an arrow of guilt that quaked him to his bones, and Wilson shuddered at her demands.

"You don't understand!" Wilson urged, "You don't understand House at all: he---he would have _hated_ me for bringing him, he would have hated _himself _for failing, even though no one would think he had failed! Anyway, I'd tried to call several times that night, I had offered before to spend the night, had offered him to spend Christmas Eve choosing 'people over pills'; even though we were not, as I have stressed, on better terms then as we are now, I know how it sounds," Wilson went on, hating the lameness of his priorities, and the visions of his own cowardice reverberating through his mind. "He was already vomiting constantly because of the detox...the Oxy wouldn't have set well with his stomach, anyway. I didn't know if it was a deliberate act or not to take his own life. I---I know I was wrong, wrong in leaving him. But I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't help. He'd given up," Wilson pleaded, straining to regain her trust in him. "You know I had two brothers growing up, and when Patrick disappeared, House took his place."

"Patrick?"

"My brother, by older brother---he went missing, after Vietnam. The war left him traumatized and he derailed into violence and became glued to different psychedelic drugs, they told me, but I was too young to understand it, at the time...It was just a part of that generation, and to my parents his disappearing was normal, I guess. No one ever spoke about it. And I only spoke of him to House one time. And House, he reminds me so much of Patrick."

Wilson, struggling desperately to maintain his composure, swept a hand across his face, pleading with his heart to not give in.

"I try to forgive Patrick for not returning home, as much as I try to forgive House for not making me a part of his home any more than he wishes. I think of him as a brother, you know a 'blood brother.' "

Wilson smiled to himself at the thought. "I've never told him, he'd never accept it openly; but it's kind of an unspoken agreement between us that we're there for each other, through thick and thin, no matter what. It was that way until this year, and I broke the pact, I guess you can say. I guess that's why it's so hard to understand why I left him there in his house with that empty pill bottle in the darkness of his own mind."

"You were both in the dark then, I think," Roberta offered kindly, and Wilson was overcome with relief that she had seemed to come to accept his version of the story. "He let you down, you let him down. You betrayed him. He betrayed you. You broke each other's pact. You by threatening to leave him, him by wanting to leave."

"Yes." Wilson was thoughtful at her wise words for a moment, watching as a butterfly danced as though in celebration of the season's change outside the window: a strange sight since it was early for Monarchs, there was still some trace of snow on the ground, for Winter had just come to an end.

"He apologized to me. I don't know why." Wilson smiled at the thought of House, gathering himself together for a rare moment of peace offering, and turning to Wilson to say: 'I had no business blaming you. I know you were just trying to help me; protect me…that's what friends do.'"

"You're smiling," Roberta noted. "Why?"

"The apology he gave. He acknowledged that I wanted to 'protect him'." He shrugged, as though it weren't as big a deal as he knew it was to have heard that, whether House had really meant it or not. It could have just been all a part of the act. That was the trick when it came to being House's friend: to know which part was the man that acted, and which part was real man.

"I still do. I always have. I did," he realized now. "And that apology, it meant a lot to me more than he'll ever know." Wilson let out a small sigh. "You have no idea what it feels like for me, to know that I have helped someone. I'm an Oncologist; it's inevitable that my helping patients won't go all that far, as most of them have various forms of terminal illnesses. He doesn't understand, because his patients always have hope, just by being his patients, it's like..."

Wilson fought for the right words.

"It's like they have the words 'I'm saved' stamped on their foreheads. He saves peoples' lives, it seems to me, ievery day/i "But I just wanted to know that I had done something to impact his life, to be remembered" Wilson laughed, feeling suddenly lighthearted for the first time in months. "He used to make fun of me because I give a crap, you know? He actually once said to a patient, 'Deep down, Wilson believes that if he cares enough, he'll never have to die.'

Wilson snorted with what became an unexpected gallows of laughter until his eyes watered, and through his blurred vision he could see Roberta smiling with him. "He used to mock me for relishing in peoples' suffering, and said that I 'eat neediness'. You know," Wilson added, smirking almost fondly, "we used to bet on who would get the most thanks for telling people that they were going to die?"

Roberta ignored this, much to his disappointment. "Do you think you wish to protect him because he needs protecting, or because you need to need the act of protecting him?"

"That's his exact argument!" Wilson exclaimed, "Only he's not as straightforward with it as you are."

"You must tell me what this tape recorder is about." Her urgency compelled him to return to his initial agenda.

"You're going to think I'm awful," he admitted, feeling sheepish again, and almost wished he hadn't come at all.

"I am not. I promise you. You don't need my approval. You know why you came; you didn't need my permission for that either, did you? This was your idea, and yours alone. Rely on that! You came here with that tape recorder for a reason. I simply want to know what is on it for me to hear."

"A conversation," he allowed, nearly breathless with nervous tension.

"Between?"

"He'd never forgive me for this." He stared rapt at the floor for several moments, debating.

"We have patient/doctor confidentiality, but I hope you aren't worried about your own merits."

"You have no idea," he confessed blithely.

"Will you play the tape, please?"

"I have to explain something first. I need someone---anyone's----professional opinion on this matter, because after all that's happened this year thus far, I'm running low on options on how to confront him about his habit." He took a deep breath. "He really gave us all a scare this week. It was outrageous what he did; he scared us so badly that I had panic attacks all week, not sure what to do next."

"And why didn't you come to me sooner?" Roberta prompted, sounding annoyed to his ears.

"That's not the point. He faked a disease. A deadly disease. Brain cancer."

"What did you say?" She was simply staring at him, blank-faced, and parch-mouthed with revulsion.

"You heard me," Wilson nodded, continuing on bravely, knowing he was putting House's liability on the line, yet again. "This man is on the end of his rope. He actually faked Cancer, and scared us all half to death, thinking he was dying. His team went absolutely ballistic when they found out it wasn't for real. They'd pulled all-nighters on my account to try to find out if he was valid for some particular test out in Boston at Duke University." Wilson shrugged, his mind gradually returning to a more sadly sober state of reflection. "And I thought that at least that overdose had shaken some sense into him; it hadn't. He is just the same obnoxious, self-serving brute that I put up with every day---"

"Why bother sticking by such a person, if it's so much trouble, so much pain?"

The question from a shrink surprised him greatly. "Aren't therapists supposed to be all for making the peace, and forgetting the past?" Wilson challenged, astonished by her candor.

It reminded him of something Cuddy had said, when House had reclined in his jail cell, joking about conjugal visits and seemingly having the time of his life: "You make everyone around you worse for being there." He'd tried to fade into the background of that hallway as she'd spoken, knowing it was out of rage for him having 'made her purger herself' in court, to get him out of jail time. Yet he knew she was including him in that scenario, because, let's face it, House didn't have too many people left on his side.

"Play the tape," Roberta demanded, as though suddenly he were the therapist, and she the patient.

He pushed play.

With a scratchy feint sound of white noise hitting their ears, the sounds of his own voice could be heard floating out of the recorder's speakers, and Wilson shut his eyes as the scene played out vividly in his mind:

WILSON: Heard Patrick's hemispherectomy went well.

HOUSE: He survived the surgery. He's unconscious, but...

WILSON: How depressed ARE you?!

HOUSE: I'm not depressed.

WILSON: You faked... CANCER.

HOUSE: It was an outpatient procedure. I was curious.

WILSON: Are you curious about heroin?

HOUSE: Not since last year's Christmas party.

Scratchy silence followed, an awkwardness that Wilson felt even now. He also felt Roberta's eyes shadowing him from across the room, reminding him again of words like 'denial' and 'approval'.

HOUSE: I know this goes against your nature, but can we not make too much of this?

WILSON: You made people think that you were going to die!

Wilson tensed himself for the anger he would receive from House in return.

HOUSE: I didn't make them! I tried to hide it! You idiots needed to get into my business.

For a moment, nothing: then laughter, and Wilson was surprised because he didn't remember laughing as loud as he was; it sounded almost barbaric; it sounded forced.

HOUSE: I'm sure I'll regret asking, but why are you laughing?

WILSON: It's ironic.

HOUSE: I'm sure I'll regret asking, but why...?

WILSON: Depression in cancer patients. It's not as common as you think. It's not the dying that gets to people. It's the dying alone. The patients with family, with friends... they tend to do okay. You don't have cancer. You do have people who give a damn. So what do you do?

He heard himself laugh again, when he knew otherwise he would have screamed.

WILSON: You fake the cancer, then push the people who care away.

HOUSE: Because... they're boring.

He waited for the inevitable silence as he had taken all that in.

HOUSE: Go home to your hotel room and laugh at that irony.

The words delivered like a slap all over again, only now he did not have to put on a smile in response, and the words stung cold, and deep. To his horror, Wilson worried he might cry.

WILSON: Start small, House. Take a chance. Maybe something that doesn't involve sticking stuff in your brain. Pizza with a friend..."

He had offered himself. A willing gesture to make amends.

WILSON A movie...Something.

Silence, and then the tape clicked to a stop.

In the aftermath of this waell of words, Wilson glanced up to find Roberta smiling softly to herself about something mysterious that he would have yearned to know the cause for.

"Well?" Wilson inquired finally, eager for some revelation on her part, though he regretted making himself relive that scene over again, because he'd blocked out much more than he'd wished to remember. "Your friend is very charming, and very stubborn: and I think he'd like you to give him the benefit of the doubt."

"'The benefit of the doubt' on WHAT?" Wilson exclaimed with vexed exasperation, feeling ill, "'The benefit of the doubt', as you say, that next time he'll fake a stomach pump?"

"If you push him too hard," Roberta returned softly, keeping an even keel, even as Wilson shuddered hard at the thought of House overdosing this time not on Oxycodone but whatever Vicodin he had left, "he will push you just as hard back, if not harder."

"You must have met House," Wilson muttered, feeling utterly defeated by House's wit yet once again, "because you seem to know him better than I do."

"Remember what you said, in your advice to House?" Roberta noted. "'Start small'?"

Wilson nodded, secretly seething, wondering how he could have been so blinded by her beauty. "What about what I said?" he managed, half wanting to know the answer, half afraid of what he might find.

"He said for you to 'not make too much of it', what did he mean by that?"

"He thinks I have a problem in caring too much what he thinks."

"Could he be right?"

"You think _I _have the problem?!" Wilson threw his hands up in resignation. "Everyone says he's right, he's always right about everything, he always has to be right. He won't have it any other way. Any other way isn't just damn good enough. He taunts me for living alone, but he's just the same. He has a huge apartment and nobody but himself in it. He won't do anything about it to change it."

Roberta rested her eyes on one of the spider plants for an introspective moment. "I am reminded of a quote by Glen Beamen. Perhaps you've heard of it: 'Stubbornness does have its helpful features. You always know what you're going to be thinking tomorrow.'"

"What?!" Wilson almost laughed, though he was not the least bit amused. "What does that mean? He's got ESP or something?"

"Listen, James. Listen. You say to him, 'take a chance'. What about, 'give it time'?"

He tried to control the rise of hysteria that was slowly creeping its way into his throat. "Have you forgotten the man's a doctor, not just some retail clerk ringing up sweaters or groceries? He could ikill /ia patient tomorrow, if he's high enough on drugs!"

He was practically shouting, despite his earlier efforts to remain calm.

"Do you trust this man?" Roberta demanded, reaching forward and shoving a stabbing finger in the direction of the tape deck. "Do you trust this man, that you call your 'blood brother' with such care?" She waited for him to speak. When he didn't, she added, "Because if you felt you had to record a conversation between you two, you must not trust yourself as much as he doesn't trust you."

Wilson shifted uneasily in the seat, momentarily lost with words.

"He's not taking you seriously because he doesn't take himself seriously right now, James. You can't force an addict to give up his drug of choice, and, if he'd risk his practice, as you fear, to get high---if this man really is as predictable as you think he is---then, at least I guess we can both say you know what's in store for you. But you must decide if you trust this man, and if he loves his job enough to sacrifice a personal life, and if he saves as many lives as you say he does, then I think you have good reason to."

"You ever trust an addict?" Wilson demanded before he could reconsider asking. "I never would have thought that was your cardinal rule---" All at once he stopped, amazed and equally as horrified at how much at that moment he sounded like Detective Tritter, and he winced with an onslaught of guilt with such intensity it was almost unbearable.

"What is it?" Roberta waited patiently, observing his change of face.

"I trust this addict with my life," Wilson whispered, and as he said the words, his vision blurred once more, but not from laughter---though he had never felt so peaceful in such a long, long time.

"Then you know what you must do." Roberta reached out to place a hand gently upon Wilson's, and at the sudden contact, his heart rested, at once content. "He'll remember that people are more important than pills, James, but you can't force him to, if that's where he's at right now. He's got to want to give up the pills. He hasn't given you up yet for good. I think that this is as good a sign as any."

Wilson had to agree. And, maybe it was because her hand was rested on his leg, knowing that they had patient/doctor confidentiality. Maybe it was because her words gave him hope and a reason to let life shift its course, and let him take a backseat for a while, and just take in the ride. But for whatever the reason, James Wilson did not feel so much alone.


End file.
